BAUBAU: A Play Space for Kids
“Perhaps children can tell us so much about their own world that it can also be a model for us?”
— Palle Nielsen
About BAUBAU
Playing, laughing, making noise, letting off steam, doing nothing – all in an exhibition venue! BAUBAU is a playspace for kids on the ground floor of the Gropius Bau, accessible free of charge. Artist Kerstin Brätsch has created a colourful space for children where more is allowed than forbidden, and which from now on will constitute a permanent feature of the exhibition hall. BAUBAU is starting as a pilot project and continues to develop and grow over the coming years both inside and outside the Gropius Bau – always in close collaboration with the children who use it.
BAUBAU playfully challenges what a museum or art institution should be. Structures and objects stimulate the imagination, along with a series of “loose parts” that children can freely use, assemble and take apart. There are no fixed guidelines here; everything is determined by the children’s own activities, which continuously transform the space. The multi-faceted interior was created by Kerstin Brätsch, who has been working as an Artist in Residence in a studio at the Gropius Bau since the beginning of the year. It is full of references and suggestions: elements from her own work – including marblings, paintings and stucco marble pieces – reappear here in various guises and new materials. Wallpapers, curtains, fabrics and seating furniture are populated by dinosaurs, fantastical creatures, termite mounds and abstract elements. With their bizarre, funny, perhaps somewhat eerie shapes and colours, they create an exciting setting for free play.
“What appealed to me about working on BAUBAU is the openness of play, the fact that play, like art, is purposeless. At the same time, play, like art, contains the potential to connect people across time, space and generations, allowing us to enter into exchange. My artistic practice is designed to accept and absorb external influences. That’s why I’ve often collaborated with other artists and artisans. At BAUBAU, that happens in a completely different and exciting way: I create an outer shell, which I then hand over to children. By playing with their own ideas and imaginations, free of my intervention, they reinvent and develop my artistic impulses in unpredictable ways. BAUBAU is a dynamic space that will continue to grow both inside and outside the Gropius Bau.”
— Kerstin Brätsch
The pedagogical concept for BAUBAU is based on the principles of free play: here, children are given time, space and permission to follow their interests and needs. To that end, they are accompanied by “playworkers”, specially trained staff who create an environment in which children can freely discover themselves. Through their presence, the playworkers help to shape and support a safe play process.
“For a long time now, I’ve been dreaming of turning an exhibition space into an adventure playground. I am very excited that we are starting Kerstin Brätsch’s BAUBAU play space as a pilot that will continue to evolve in the coming months and years. Instead of trying to teach children about art, we’re doing it the other way around: adults have much to learn from the openness and freedom of children’s encounters with art. Play serves as a model for how we can interact with one another in times of increasing social tension: openly rather than judgmentally, with each other rather than against each other, and always exchanging perspectives and points of view. At the same time, we hope that BAUBAU will serve as an invitation to many people with children who have not previously felt that our programme speaks to them.”
– Jenny Schlenzka, Director of the Gropius Bau
For more information on BAUBAU you can check our FAQ.
About Kerstin Brätsch
Born in Hamburg, Kerstin Brätsch lives and works in Berlin and New York. Her intensive study of painting began while she was a student at New York’s Columbia University and the Berlin University of the Arts, where she studied under Lothar Baumgarten.
Kerstin Brätsch’s nearly two decades of artistic creation can be understood as a pulsating cycle: her ideas and motifs move from one material to the next in a process of continuous evolution. At the heart of her work lies a desire to shake up conventional notions of what painting can be. In 2007, the founded DAS INSTITUT together with Adele Röder; since 2010, she’s been collaborating with Debo Eilers under the name KAYA, working together with friends, colleagues and craftspeople. In her site-specific installations, she departs from the classic format of the exhibition space, bringing together her artistic impulses with life’s more quotidian needs. Her pieces Fossil Psychics for Christa (2019) at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), MIMIKRY (2022) at the Fridericianum (Kassel) and MEMORY (2021) at the Café du Parc at LUMA Arles, for example, all double as cafés. Encounter and exchange are also at the heart of her BAUBAU project, a permanent play space for children at the Gropius Bau.
Her works have been shown in solo exhibitions at the Ludwig Forum Aachen (2022), the Fondazione Memmo in Rome (2018) and the Museum Brandhorst in Munich (2017), among others. She has participated in important group exhibitions, including the 59th and 54th Biennale di Venezia (2022, 2011) at the Camden Arts Centre London (2020), the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg (2020) and the MoMA (2024, 2020, 2014). In 2020, Brätsch was awarded the Helen Frankenthaler Award for Painting by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in New York and received the Peill-Prize from the Guenther-Peill-Foundation, in 2017 she received the Edward Munch Art Award from the Munchmuseet in Oslo. In 2019 she was awarded the Villa Romana Prize as KAYA together with Debo Eilers.
In October 2024, Kerstin Brätsch took up a Professorship in Painting/Drawing at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts (HFBK).